The Admiral's Daughter

by Margaret Stuart Lane

Not until the girl was nearly seventeen did the Admiral suddenly wake up to realise that his 'little maid' was dangerously near womanhood. Also, he could not hide from himself the fact that Elise, now the heiress of a considerable estate in France (governed by Delauret's attorney) could not for ever stay hidden in a Cornish village. Hazy ideas of the future began to float about his mind, of his duty to these two young ladies in his care. But with Marion's seventeenth birthday came the landing of Monmouth at Lyme. The Admiral ceased to be a father and became a loyalist magistrate.

With the spring of the following year, however, Mistress Keziah Penrock came down with her coach and servants from Bath, and before she left, did more than find holes in the guest chamber hangings. Time, and the lady's curiosity about her niece, had healed the breach between brother and sister. Thus, for the first time for twelve years, Mistress Keziah visited the home of her childhood. In Marion she scarcely recognised the little one she had seen before; but during her stay the shrewd eyes had glimpses of depths of resolution and hardihood under the girl's gentle demeanour that made the old woman grave. 'She'll go her own way,' she mused. 'And whether 'tis a bid for sorrow or happiness 'twill be just the same. Her mother's given her that sweetness, but she's a Penrock.'

One night when 'the child,' as the Admiral persisted in calling his daughter, was abed, Mistress Keziah hazarded to her brother a plan she had conceived concerning her niece's future. A slight disappointment had preceded the making of this plan. She had hoped Marion would be affectionately inclined towards her and consent to coming to Exeter awhile. But the lady, not realising in time that Marion was no longer a child—indeed being the age when most girls in that period were either married or embroidering their wedding clothes—had weighed a little too heavily on her authority. She had said, 'Do this, my child,' where it had been wiser to say 'Will you, my dear?' She was keen-sighted enough to see that the girl would not come to her for her pleasure, and being sincerely attached to her, decided to try other means of wresting her from that beleaguered garrison which she was pleased to consider Garth had become. Deciding the moment was good, she opened fire on the Admiral.

'Let Marion go up to Constance a spell, or get Constance to come here. A beautiful girl like that should not be married off-hand to a country squire.'

'Married!' said the Admiral, aghast. 'Who's talking of marriage, pray? Not the child herself?'

'Marion has never even thought of it,' said the lady quietly. 'That is the way you have brought her up.'

'All the better,' replied the Admiral with a look of content. Then the heavy brows drew down at an unaccustomed idea. 'Beautiful? Marion beautiful? Nonsense!'

'It were just as well Marion did not hear you say so, or the men fishing in the Channel for that matter,' icily remarked the lady.

The thought was new to the Admiral, who had long ago settled his mind to the fact that however adorable his child might be, beauty was not her lot.

'Her chin is a trifle long,' mused the lady, 'her nose a trifle short. But somehow each makes the other right. 'Tis a straight little nose. She has no colouring, it is true, and her hair is rather spoiled, bleached in parts, through exposure to the sun. But she has the Penrock eyes and air.' The lady drew herself up. She had been a noted beauty in her youth.